RhetoriHub

E-mail

rhetorican at gmail dot com

About Jehuda

Señor Jehuda, aka "El Blogo de Liberto", is an attorney and media professional with a background in TV marketing and production, copywriting, independent filmmaking, and spontaneously speaking perfect Spanish. A proud Texan who recently escaped from Los Angeles to Albuquerque, he spends far too much time thinking about movies. Jehuda is also a contributor at YesButHowever.com and PJ Lifestyle.

Copyright and Trademark Notices

All original content on The Rhetorican - including the "Gravatar" photo of the Chrysler Building - is copyrighted and the property of this blog's author unless otherwise indicated; and is not to be used without permission except as provided herein.

"The Rhetorican" and rhetorican.com are trademarks belonging to the author.

Think about it: privately owned, decentralized propaganda organs with a massive audience, enabling the soft Stalinism of political correctness, and without any of the overt thuggishness of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth (except in the case of Rebecca Aguilar, of course).

It’s harmless. This is a bunch of Leftie reactionary crap (via Instapundit).

There’s nothing nefarious about JROTC. It teaches the most useful skills and attitudes – including target practice.

And I didn’t even sign up for the Army afterwards. There’s no coaxing into military service by deception or other means. There’s no need for it. As we all know, the military has been meeting its recruitment quotas without a hitch for years now.

Sarcasm aside, it always strikes me as odd how the multi-billion dollar industry that is Hollywood never attracts the opprobrium of Democrats as to “excessive” or “windfall” or “obscene” profits, but other multi-billion dollar industries – like Wall St. or oil – do.

Still, just the fact that Taken is being distributed in the U.S. by one of the major studios is a big step (but it’s Fox, you don’t think Rupert Murdoch had something to do with it?…Nah).

I hope she’s right. The character of Said in Lost, who is openly depicted as a former Iraqi Republican Guard interrogator (well-versed in torture), could also be seen as part of this liberating trend. Lost is not a Fox show, by the way.

The stultifying PC approach to the topic of Muslim radicals on the screen – refusing to ever paint them as bad guys – can be irritating (suffice it to say that when Paramount’s screen adaptation of Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears substituted Muslim terrorists with white supremacists I just wanted to puke); but it’s also a muzzle on free expression for which there is no legal recourse. That’s the worst part about it.

Yoo Knew This Was Coming (via Instapundit). Obama won’t prosecute former Bushies for “war crimes” and has been quite aggressive in maintaining the essence of Bush’s national security apparatus for the benefit of his own administration, so defending John Yoo shouldn’t be too surprising.

Still, Yoo is such a super-villain among the Left that the moaning and rolling of eyes among the Leftie commentariat will be widespread, if not muted so as not to seem too anti-Obama. At the least, hundreds of knee-jerk liberal law professors will cry themselves to sleep tonight over it.

Andrew Sullivan will probably twist himself into a pretzel making excuses for Obama, the way he twists all reason to convince himself he is a conservative.

But what will Glenn Greenwald do? I guess he can only hang on to Hope and settle for little Change.

For the last few weeks, the president has strenuously avoided getting dragged into this quite legitimate and ultimately losing policy squabble. He did not seek these legislative Christmas tree ornaments, and it seems clear he does not want to expend any political capital to defend or preserve them.

The real test will be…convincing the House Democrats they need to sacrifice some of the pet programs that are hard to justify as part of an emergency rescue plan. Then we’ll see just how strong Obama’s mandate for change really is.

I think he might be right. But if the Senate rescues Obama’s rescue plan with bigger concessions for Republicans then it’s all business as usual in DC. Lots of money spent in bigger government programs, with big tax cuts to boot.

Sounds like a bunch of sweet nothings to me. And I’m not just saying that. Obama always talks a good game, but the bottom line is he won’t decide what goes on the stimulus legislation. That is up to Pelosi and Company.

Keep in mind Democrats and Obama don’t need the GOP House membership’s vote to pass any stimulus. If they want GOP votes at all it’s for cover in case the bill fails to stimulate anything.

Obama’s aim for better relations with the Muslim world is probably sincere, but it’s hard not to conclude that in practice it will be more talk than walk, emitted for the benefit of his administration’s PR machine worldwide and at home.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse also sees through the “Breaking with Bush” patina of Obama’s new approach to the Middle East. (via Instapundit)

Anne Thompson is one of the 30 people at Variety who got laid off yesterday. It looks like her blog will remain; but even if it doesn’t I’m sure she’ll land on her feet elsewhere and her blog will go on in one way or another.

If you’re a loyal reader of Thompson on Hollywood, like I am, go ahead and leave her a supportive comment. Layoffs are never easy, even when you have more than one job.

And so it came to pass that the failure to pay taxes has finally been legitimized as “not a big deal” (that’s if Charlie Rangel remaining in Congress didn’t legitimize it first): the WSJ reports Tim Geithner was confirmed on a 60-34 vote by the Senate to be Treasury Secretary.

This goes for public Democrat public servants only. Don’t expect this standard to be applied to Republican presidential nominees…or to the public at large…or to any conservatives who stumble onto the limelight, such as Joe Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber.

So I just heard Rush offer Obama a true bi-partisan compromise [UPDATE: you can read the transcript or listen to Rush proposing the plan himself here] on how to spend the $1 trillion “stimulus” plan funds: split the $1 trillion along the lines of the national popular vote of the presidential election!

53% 54% (see update below) of the funds for the “make work” government spending Democrats and Obama favor;

and the approximately 46% or so of the money for supply-side style tax cuts, the sort that Republicans should favor.

Sounds good to me. Plenty of money to go around for both sides. More than fair; and truly bi-partisan.

UPDATE: I should add that Rush did account for the small percentage who voted for third-party candidates. He suggested – most graciously – that it should be added to the suggested government spending portion of the funds. So it would all add up to about 54% of the funds for government programs and the rest to supply-side supporting tax cuts.

So Democrats get an added bonus of cash to play with. They should like that.

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required): “Lending at many of the nation’s largest banks fell in recent months, even after they received $148 billion in taxpayer capital that was intended to help the economy by making loans more readily available.”

Indeed. The sad thing is that honor is not a widely respected quality in our leaders anymore. In fact, in our decadent political culture, it’s often a hindrance to those determined to achieve political stature and power.